A Partnership Designed to Meet the Challenge to Journalism

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Nothing is more important to the success of democracy than ensuring that its citizens and its policy makers have accurate, unbiased information and analysis about the key issues of the day.

The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was created to join the expertise of NORC, one of the world’s premier independent research organizations, with The AP, which provides news seen every day over all media platforms and formats by more than half of the world’s population. This combination of rigorous, objective research and reliable, unbiased journalism has unmatched potential to reach both broad audiences and policy makers at every governmental level, creating a seamless transition from the gathering of survey-based information to a more fully-informed society.

Because of its worldwide membership and NORC’s research breadth and capacity, together they are in a unique position to serve as an important new source of research-based information and analysis once common among journalism organizations, but now lacking.

Because The AP is global, but used at the local level, the findings of The AP-NORC Center can be localized by news organizations to tie individual community views to national and international survey results. It is the only news organization with bureaus in every statehouse, offering the opportunity to bring survey-based information and analysis to the state level as well.

NORC at the University of Chicago is unmatched in its capacity to do policy-level analysis of research results and to communicate that analysis to policy makers.

The headquarters of the Center is in NORC’s Chicago offices, but draws on the combined resources of both organizations.